Canada losing global respect, thanks to Harper government

Do you remember being proud to wear the Canadian flag on your backpack or a Canada pin on your shirt? I am proud to be a Canadian. I went crazy watching Canadians win medals at the Winter Olympics. I cheer exclusively for Canadian NHL teams and I am madly excited about the success of the "We The North" Raptors even though there isn’t a Canadian on the team. But these days I am less likely to proclaim it outside of Canada. Why you might ask? Although I think there is a growing awareness that our international standing has been eroded, I wonder if the majority of Canadians have connected the dots as to how this happened and its impact on those Canadians who enjoy travelling outside of North America.

It was my own and my young family’s first trip off the North American continent when we flew to Great Britain in mid-1976. I think it was in Broadstairs, a small seaside community in Kent, where we became aware of the advantages of Canada’s excellent reputation. We were in the process of having a not very comfortable breakfast when our 11-year-old daughter said, in a voice loud enough to be overheard by the waitress attending a nearby table, "Why is that waitress not nice to us?" To which my wife replied, "She doesn’t know that we are Canadians. She probably thinks we are Americans." From that point on, Ms. Nasty turned into Ms. Sweetness.

We travelled to a few more countries over the next 20 years, always wearing our Canadian flag prominently. It was after 2000 and our retirement that we became home exchangers. We exchanged with couples in Australia, Belgium, Germany and Spain, to name a few of 10. It was while on exchange to Hattingen, Germany, in 2003 that we saw again how respected Canada was when we spoke with a man wearing a ball cap emblazed with the letters B.C. and a backpack with a Canadian flag. Our impression that this person was a Canadian was quickly disabused when he revealed that he was an American disguising his identity. Nor was this the first or last time an American became a Canadian for foreign travel.

Canada was respected internationally for many reasons during the Chretien Liberal years. I was not a fan of Prime Minister Chretien, but I liked the fact that Chretien bragged that Canada was rated the best country in which to live. Canada was a member of the United Nations Security Council, had a well-earned reputation for our contributions as a peacekeeper, and was generally respected in the international community.

Now, thanks to the hardline ideology of the Harper government, we lost our seat on the UN Security Council, we are no longer respected as a peacekeeper, and Canada is viewed as a climate-change denier that puts the interests of the Alberta tarsands ahead of the environment. Canada is rated among the worst abusers of the environment in the world. Our reputation as good-will ambassadors and a friendly, generally neutral nation with a progressive, civil and healthy democratic government no longer exists. I can’t imagine that Americans are wearing our Canadian flag on their backpacks any longer. It will take a wholesale rethink of our role in the world before we can again be a highly respected country in the eyes of the majority of countries and their citizens.

John Fielding is a retired adjunct professor from Queen’s University. He lives in Kingston.